Bye, Ecuador

I’m the kind of exhausted you are when you do six or eight weeks’ worth of stuff in two weeks. A part of me wants to stay for much longer and another part of me, the part that’s going to get what it wants, would like to go home and take a nap. But before that happens, a few final things that didn’t get into earlier posts:

Despite this sort of thing everywhere, I have not experienced a loss of power during the entire time I’ve been here.

We think we know fruit, but really we don’t know fruit.

There are dogs everywhere – in the restaurants, on the roads, along the highways, in the stores, everywhere. They’re not mangy wild dogs, they’re happy, healthy well-fed dogs that certainly belong to someone. One day Lucas, Caroline and I were having coffee in a park. There was a dog sleeping on a bench and, in his sleep did one of those highly satisfying canine stretches, rolled on his back, and fell off the bench onto the ground. Then he gave us a “yeah that’s right.  I meant to do that” look and went back to sleep.

This is the monument in Quito celebrating Ecuador’s independence from Spain. At the bottom the lion (representing Spain) is looking up at the Condor (Ecuador’s national bird), thinking “Wait, what? What the hell just happened? I’m a lion, how did I get defeated by a bird.” To celebrate the occasion, Ecuador decided to go all out and hire an Italian artist to make the statue in Italy. But Italians don’t know what condors look like, so Ecuador killed one and sent it to Italy. Now, 200 years later, condors are an endangered species. There are fewer than 150 left here.

Despite the crushing Spanish influence, there are still hundreds of indigenous communities throughout Ecuador. It’s not an easy life. When we had lunch in Ozogoche, we learned that although the community has been there for hundreds of years, the land around it was designated a national park (and later a UNESCO world heritage site), so the people in the town can’t do anything with the land that might help improve their lives. The only thing they’re allowed to do is graze cattle. They sell the milk to a wholesaler for 30 cents per liter, and other than the periodic lunches they prepare for groups like ours, that milk revenue is all they get in terms of income. Everything else they need comes from trading vegetables or fish in the markets unless they happen to have a job in the nearest town, which is many miles from their homes, via a rutted dirt road. A little perspective goes a long way.

Nadine asked this Ozogoche resident for permission before she took this picture. As soon as she finished, he held up his index finger to say “That’ll be one dollar, please.” Fair enough.

Back In Quito

Today I retraced my steps and returned to Quito. Instead of camaraderie and adventure, this time it was a 40-minute flight in a plane with many Americans, on an airline where, according to the on-board announcement, “everyone is giving their everything,” which probably isn’t a bad way to live.

I’ve been up since 5:00 am, so my first stop in Quito was here to pick up a coffee and what passes for a croissant in South America.

 

But I declined this option.

For tomorrow, my original plan was to take the teleférico (cable car) up the mountain above Quito and then hike to the top, which takes a couple of hours. But a few days ago, it had a "mechanical issue" and suddenly stopped running, which resulted in people hanging in mid-air for up to 10 hours depending on where they were because while Quito was very good at getting people on and off the teleférico at the ends, it had never thought about how to get people off  from the middle. As a result, the city wisely decided to keep it closed until it figured out exactly what went wrong and what a workable rescue plan might look like.

Due to a quirk in the airline schedules, I have slightly more than two days here. On the way from the airport, the taxi driver advised me to be sure I only ever take licensed taxis in Quito. He said that in recent years, two separate foreigners took private taxis and were never heard from again. When I was in the park having coffee and eating a croissant this morning, a policeman walked up to me, welcomed me to Quito and advised me never to stop to talk to any local who approaches me and that if I ever have a question about anything, to make sure to only ask someone with a Policia insignia on his/her sleeve. And yesterday, someone told me to never, ever use an ATM unless it is in, or attached to, a bank building. It’s just great that so many people here want me to have a good time!

Bye, Cuenca

 Another day, another national park. Again there was no terrifying road, no gasping for breath at 13,000 feet, no slamming my head into a low doorframe and also no bird shitting on my head.To be honest, I miss the drama.

Cajas is a two-level national park. We started on the ground level, where we hiked around a lush forest with hummingbirds, ducks, and tropical flowers.

Then we went up to the upper deck, where we hiked to the Ecuadorian continental divide. The
landscape is very forbidding – not much grows here. This is a spot where warm, humid, tropical air from the Amazon runs into mountains and gets stuck, causing permanent cloudiness and an unending supply of water for Cuenca, the city at the bottom of the mountains. These glacial basins in Cajas store the humidity from the Amazon.

Speaking of water, my current city is the only place in Ecuador where you can drink the water. It’s clean, chlorinated and comes straight from the mountains. Everything I’ve read on the internet and everyone in Cuenca talks about how safe the water is and the fact that it has a distinct, slightly sweet taste. I didn’t really sense the sweetness, mostly because I am still not putting any Ecuadorian tap water in my body. I have gotten this far without any gastrointestinal disasters and I’m not about to push my luck now. If you want to know what the tap water here tastes like, come on down.

On several of my travels here, I’ve run across the remains of this, the so-called Inca Road. It consisted of around 25,000 miles of roads through western South America. Used for trade, wars, and religious ceremonies, it also had drainage, rest stops and no Cracker Barrel restaurants, which made it even better than current roads. Built in the 1400s and 1500s, it probably would still be expanding but the Spanish showed up and sort of impeded the construction process.

Tomorrow Quito, and shortly thereafter, home.